What Bloggers Want from Ad Networks

I mentioned earlier that a few of my posts might appear on the Performancing blog from time to time. There are actually a few there already, most of which are reposts from ProBlogger – however I did write this special post for them that hasn’t be published anywhere else yet.

I wrote it about a month ago now (in fact I wrote it so long ago I’d almost forgotten) on the topic of what I’d like from an Ad Network – it’s like my dream wishlist and includes a whole collection of ideas from the top of my head – many of them unformed and unfinished. I hope you enjoy it – I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

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Comments

what i want from ad networks?
i’ve been thru your the other article and you have basically everything mention, except for one. which is tracking the clicks thru URL and to be able to BAND it thru URL.

now, what would someone wants to DISABLE certain url from displaying ads? maybe there isn’t anyone except for me, before moving to wordpress, i got Google Search code inserted into my blog, and after moving to wordpress, i have started ti suspect something when the keywords searched by my users are not relevant to my content, totally off topic.

and to my surprise, I manage to track down the source, one of my friends is using the Google Search code in his blog, and good thing its a personal blog, but what if someone else steal the code and put it in his sexual fantasy blog? will i get ban? i am worried coz, lately the search query has keywords such as …. well, i’m not going to name it, but it has something to do with sex.

is someone using my code in his/her blog? will i get penalize for something that is not my mistake/actions?

my blog is http://blog.miragestudio7.com, an architecture tutorial blog and it has no google search in it, coz i am afraid that someone else might rip off the code again.

so, i am waiting for the day google actually let me block certain URl and to be able to see which URL is producing more clicks that others.

I think it is ridiculous that Google etc. don’t seem to want us to know which pages/ads actually produced clicks. Channels are completely insufficient when you have thousands of pages as I do.

I can run a product like Asrep (see http://foo-web.com/asrep-review.html if you don’t know what that is – that page is just a review, not a pitch for the product), but that has limitations also and can’t give me the information I really want: correlatiing specific pages and ad settings to income. If you have a small website, you can do that to some extent, but it’s a guess, and on a busy site, it’s impossible because there is too much happening.

The ad providers of course know this information. Providing it to us would help us improve our pages to attract better ads – ads more likely to be of interest to our readers, which benefits everyone – reader, ad network, advertiser and us.

So what’s the problem? I’m sure that somehow the ad networks must see some potential for abuse, but I can’t guess what that would be. If anyone knows, or can guess, I’d love to know. Maybe I’d feel better about their attitudes if I understood the reason. I wrote to Google and asked them to explain why they won’t give us this and got no reply at all.. I just love the secrecy and mystery, don’t you?

We wont be republishing anything other than the 3/4 posts we did when setting up the site, we’ll just link over to you if your posting stuff we like. We had planned to go that route, but ultimately, it’s not nearly as much fun as posting 100% original content…

My wishlist is relatively simple:
1) Ease of optimization (manage all deployed ad units entirely in a single interface, ability to tweak any and all appropriate settings such as colors, size, etc…)
2) paypal payment option
3) Compatible with other major systems, especially in the way ads are designed/look.
4) easy on the processor. A lot of heavy javascript slows down page loading.
5) Ability to track danged near everything to do with the ad.
6) Honesty. Chitika’s a big one that needs to watch this, lately I’ve been catching them listing a merchant as a “best deal” on the description tab when that merchant actually has the higher (or even highest) price on the deals tab. (I’ve posted about my e-mail exchange with Chitika on this issue)

I’m a pretty simple guy, but then again, I’m more of an amateur blogger than a pro. I’m looking to make a little extra cash, not quit my day job, heh.